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  The wheels on the bus went round and round and Periwig Tombs smiled on.

  Ellie Anna Lovell wasn’t smiling, although with the natural curve of her mouth it might have appeared that she was.

  ‘Some joker’, she said, ‘has removed the sign from your door and changed the number.’

  Mr Shields blew out his cheeks. ‘I wonder who might have done that,’ he said. ‘So how can I help you, young woman?’

  ‘I am Ellie Anna Lovell and I have been sent by head office. You were expecting me, I believe.’

  ‘Somewhat earlier, but yes. Would you care for a cup of tea?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Splendid. Well Derek here will show you where the tea things are and you can make us all one.’

  Ellie Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t make tea,’ she said.

  ‘Well, never mind. We have coffee.’

  ‘Nor coffee.’ Ellie Anna shook her head. It was a definite bit of head-shaking. It signified that she definitely didn’t make either tea or coffee. Definitely, absolutely, not.

  ‘Ah,’ said the editor. ‘Ah, well indeed.’

  Ellie Anna gave the office a thorough looking-over. It was not a thing of great beauty to behold and she beheld it with distaste.

  Beside the window stood the editor’s desk, with the editor behind it. The editor and the editor’s desk both looked most untidy. The editor was shabbily dressed in the ruins of a once tweed suit. The desk was a mayhem of papers and books and paper cups and ashtrays and old-fashioned telephones, mostly off the hook. There were pictures on the walls, group shots, framed front pages, yellow with age. And these hung at angles just untrue enough to annoy the fastidious. The carpet was grey and bare of thread. Filing cabinets were open and most looked empty within.

  ‘Has there been a robbery?’ asked Ellie Anna Lovell.

  ‘Sorry? What?’ The editor glanced all around.

  ‘A robbery,’ said Ellie. ‘Perhaps someone broke in to steal those unpacked boxes of Mute Corp computer parts. Perhaps they were disturbed during the process and only managed to ransack the office.’

  ‘You are a very rude young woman,’ said the editor. ‘Dismiss all thoughts of having sex with me.’

  The only tidy thing resident to the office made a ghastly swallowing sound and said, ‘Please forgive Mr Shields. He’s been under a lot of pressure recently. My name is Derek and I am the Mercury’s features editor. Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  Ellie Anna looked at Derek and nodded her silver head. Derek wore a neat grey suit with a pressed white collarless shirt. He was young and tall and slim and handsome with short black hair and pale blue eyes. And those eyes looked her full in the face and never once strayed to her breasts.

  ‘Thank you Derek,’ said Ellie Anna Lovell. ‘English Breakfast, without sugar.’

  ‘English Breakfast, right.’ Derek chewed his bottom lip. ‘I might have to send out for that.’

  ‘Well, whatever you have will be fine.’

  ‘Fine. Then if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you around the building on the way.’

  Derek led Ellie Anna from the office and closed the door behind him. The editor sat and fumed at his desk and made a very fierce face.

  The face of Periwig Tombs was smiling sweetly. The tour bus was passing the allotments now and Big Bob Charker was singing the praises of Brentford’s horticulturalists.

  ‘Twenty-three different varieties of tomato,’ Big Bob said into the microphone. ‘Twenty-three different varieties of sprout. And the mighty oak trees at the riverside end are the natural habitat of the lesser spotted grebe and the piebald finch chuck-chuck fiddledum bird.’

  ‘Eh?’ went Periwig as he swung the wheel. But his brain was roaring forward. Take a safari through the wildlife sanctuary and rare bird reserve of Allotment World. Enjoy a sprout and grebe burger at Periwigs, the exclusive allotment eatery.

  ‘Big bare-bottomed bumbly bees,’ said the voice of Big Bob Charker. ‘Busy busy bumble bees and Walter the Wasp as well.’

  ‘Waspish,’ said Ellie Anna Lovell. ‘Waspish, ill-mannered and clearly a misogynist.’

  She sat opposite Derek at a window table in the Plume Café. The Plume Café sat at the top end of the High Street. The Plume Café boasted twenty-two different varieties of tea. None of which contained any sprout.

  ‘I thought you’d like it better here than in the staff canteen,’ said Derek.

  ‘You mean that cupboard.’

  ‘The staff canteen cupboard, yes. How’s the tea?’

  Ellie Anna Lovell sipped her English Breakfast. ‘Remarkably good, actually. The filtered water makes all the difference.’

  ‘There’s not much you can’t get in Brentford if you know where to look.’

  ‘I was talking about your boss, Mr Shields,’ said Ellie Anna Lovell.

  ‘Yes, I know you were.’ Derek sipped at his Typhoo. ‘He’s not a bad man. He’s rather fierce and I agree he’s something of a misogynist. But I’m afraid that he fears what you might do to the paper.’

  ‘He should fear for his job,’ said Ellie. ‘Speaking to a complete stranger in the way that he did.’

  ‘He has the job for life. It’s written into his contract.’

  ‘Only in Brentford,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yes, you’re right about that.’

  ‘But he has nothing to fear from me anyway. I’m not here to change anything. I’m just here to study.’

  ‘You want to learn how the paper’s run? There’s really not much to it.’

  Ellie Anna plucked at her hair and turned smooth strands between her fingers. Backwards, forwards, backwards. ‘It’s not the paper,’ she said. ‘It’s the town itself. I’m writing my doctoral thesis on it. I’m doing a phd in socio-economics. I approached the newspaper publisher at their head office. Told them about the project I had in mind. They put up the finance and arranged for me to come and work at the Brentford Mercury for three weeks. Mostly I just want to study the archives, learn about the history of the borough. I’m fascinated by the way that it appears to co-exist with the other boroughs surrounding it, yet remains curiously isolated and insular. I’m seeking to build up a general framework on which to hang my thesis.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Derek. ‘Then Mr Shields has got it all wrong. He thought that you were some kind of trouble-shooter from head office sent to shake up the place.’

  ‘That’s what head office would like me to do, but I don’t want to cause any trouble. You can tell Mr Shields that I won’t cause him any trouble.’

  Derek smiled, exposing a set of perfect pearly-white teeth. ‘Would you mind terribly if I didn’t?’ he said. ‘I’ve worked at the Mercury for nearly two years now and he’s shouted at me on every single day of them. It’s been a real pleasure to watch him squirm, I’d like to enjoy it for just a little longer.’

  Ellie raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re a naughty boy,’ she said.

  ‘Naughty bus,’ said Periwig Tombs, struggling with the handbrake. ‘I oiled you this morning, don’t you get stuck on me now.’

  The tour bus was parked at the western tip of the baseline of the Great Brentford Triangle.

  ‘It is popularly believed’, came the voice of Big Bob through the speaker system, ‘that the city of Manchester has more canals in it than does Venice. This is not altogether true, although we do have the world’s most famous football team. Man U.’

  ‘Eh?’ went Periwig Tombs and he turned his head and slid back the little glass panel behind the driver’s seat. ‘Oi, Bob,’ he called, along the deserted lower deck of the bus. ‘Have you gone stone bonkers or something? What’s all this toot about Man U?’

  Big Bob’s big head popped out from that special place where the bus conductors stand. ‘Eee-up, bonny lad,’ said he. And ‘Eee-up, bonny lad’ came out of the speakers.

  ‘Eee-up, bonny lad?’ shouted Periwig Tombs. ‘That’s not Manchester, that’s Geordie, isn’t it? Have you been drinking, or what?’

  ‘Ding, ding,’ we
nt Big Bob. ‘Hold very tight please.’

  ‘You have been drinking!’ shouted Periwig. ‘You’ve been at the giggly pops.’

  ‘Pardon I?’ said Big Bob Charker. ‘Giggly pops? What are those?’

  ‘Piggly pops. Bimbo bubbly pops, damn me, I’ve forgotten how to speak.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Big Bob, suddenly. ‘What are you doing in my front room?’

  ‘He’s lost it!’ Periwig Tombs slammed shut the glass shutter and got into a bit of a sweat. ‘He’s gone mad. He’s lost his lollipops, fan belts, no not those. What’s happening? I’m getting out of here.’

  Periwig did revvings of the engine and then stared out of the windscreen. ‘Where am I?’ he said. ‘I don’t recognize this place. I’m lost. The bus is lost.’

  There came a dreadful rattling and banging at the shut glass shutter. Periwig ducked his head.

  ‘Where are we?’ shouted Big Bob Charker. He didn’t have the mic any more. ‘Get us back to Bren…’ he paused. ‘To Brentham, no to Brentside, no to Brenda, no to…help! I’m lost! We’re all lost. The bus is lost, help, help, help!’

  Periwig Tombs stuck his foot down. He didn’t know what was going on. What was happening to him or what was happening to Big Bob. But he suddenly felt very very afraid. Outside all the world was strange. The shops and houses, the lorries and cars. All were suddenly alien. Suddenly strange and unknown. His powers of recognition were blanking off. A car was a car and then it was not. Then it was just an odd-coloured shape. The road ahead was tarmac no more, now it was only grey matter.

  ‘Aggh!’ Periwig Tombs took his foot off the clutch. The bus was parked in second gear. The handbrake stretched and snapped and the old bus rumbled forward.

  ‘What’s this?’ went Periwig, regarding the steering wheel in his hands. ‘Black thing, coiled round? Spade? Spode? Snail? Snake? Snake? Aaagh! Snake!’

  Periwig covered his face with his hands. The bus began to gather speed.

  The tourists on the top deck were unaware that anything untoward was occurring, other than that the rather odd commentary had ceased. They cheered as the bus scattered several pedestrians and had a passing parson off his pushbike.

  ‘Look at that parsnip,’ said the lady in the straw hat. ‘No, I don’t mean parsnip. Paspatoo. No, pasta. No, parrot. No, not parrot.’

  ‘Where am I?’ wailed Big Bob. ‘What am I doing here?’

  ‘Get it off me,’ wailed Periwig Tombs. ‘No get what off me? Wssss gggging nnnnnnn?’

  Up the High Street went the wayward bus, gathering speed all the time. Motorists hooted and swerved to either side. Cars mounted pavements, scattering further pedestrians. The bus now mounted a pavement too, bringing down a lamppost.

  In the Plume Café, Derek said, ‘You really won’t find much to interest you here, Ms Lovell. If you want to know the secret of Brentford, I’ll tell it to you. It’s inertia. There’s nothing more powerful than inertia. Things that are standing still are the hardest things to get moving.’

  And then Derek glanced out of the window.

  And then Derek flung the table aside and flung himself upon the body of Ellie Anna Lovell.

  It wasn’t a sudden rush of lust.

  It was something else.

  Ellie toppled backwards from her chair. Derek grabbed her and dragged her aside.

  The tour bus, engine screaming, and tourists screaming too, ploughed into the front window of the Plume Café, demolishing all that lay before it.

  3

  It was joy, joy happy joy no more.

  All across Brentford alarm bells started to ring.

  At the cottage hospital. Where the doctors and nurses on duty were joyously playing at doctors and nurses. As doctors and nurses will so often do, if business is slack and there is an R in the month.

  At the fire station. Where the lads of Pink watch, Lou Lou, Arnie Magoo, Rupert, Gibble and Chubb, were forming a human pyramid in the station yard. As firemen will so often do when they’ve run out of things to polish and the weather’s sunny enough.

  At Brentford nick. Where the boys in blue were sitting in the staff canteen discussing the Hegelian dialectic, that interpretive method whereby the contradiction between a proposition and its antithesis can theoretically be resolved at a higher level of truth. As policemen will so often do when not fighting crime.

  And finally at the offices of the Brentford Mercury, where Hildemar Shields sat fiercely scowling. He was told simply to ‘hold the front page’. As editors so often are.

  These alarm bells had been precipitated into fevered ringings by calls made by Derek on his mobile phone.

  He and Ellie had survived the holocaust and struggled all but unscathed from the wreckage of the Plume Café. They were now engaged, along with many a plucky Brentonian good Samaritan, in dragging crash victims from the mangled bus and administering what first aid they could.

  Miraculously, there appeared to have been no loss of life. The driver was bruised and bloody, but he was still conscious and he now sat on the pavement, holding his head in his hands and being comforted by several caring souls.

  The tour guide, who had been thrown into the cab, over the driver’s head and out through the windscreen, should surely have been dead. But he wasn’t. He’d travelled straight through the old-fashioned flap-up windscreen, which had obligingly flapped up for him, straight through the serving hatch behind the Plume’s counter, out of the open rear door and onto a pile of stunt mattresses which had been left in the back yard. As is often the case.

  He now sat next to the driver, staring into space.

  Those on the open top deck of the bus had not been quite so lucky. As the tour bus had torn into the café, they had been swept backwards by building debris and now lay in a moaning knotted heap in the rear of the crumpled vehicle, blocking up the top of the stairs.

  There appeared to be five of them, all interlaced by arms and legs in an intricate manner. Four students of Japanese extraction and a lady in a battered straw hat.

  Untangling them was proving to be a problem of Gordian proportion. And Derek was finally forced to step in and halt the enthusiastic efforts of a plucky Brentonian motor mechanic who was tackling the task with a crowbar.

  ‘Best leave it to the professionals,’ was Derek’s advice. ‘They’ll be along shortly.’

  And of course they were.

  The gathering crowd, which now seemed to include most of the population of Brentford, cheered wildly as the local fire tender, followed by the local ambulance, followed by four local police cars, came tearing up the High Street, sirens banshee-wailing and beacon lights a-flash-flash-flash.

  Exciting stuff.

  But, sadly, it has to be said that there can sometimes be problems with the emergency services when they find themselves all being called out to the scene of a disaster at the same time. There tends to be a lot of competition and a lot of disputation too. Particularly regarding just who is supposed to be in overall charge and who should be giving the orders to whom. There is often a tendency for the first to arrive on the scene to put themselves in charge, whether they should be putting themselves in charge or not. There can be an awful lot of posturing and pulling rank and being difficult and, well, being male really.

  It’s a ‘man thing’ and it has a lot to do with the uniform.

  One might have thought that in Brentford, things would have been rather different. But if one might have thought this, one would have been very wrong.

  Men will be men and boys will be boys and so on and suchlike and whatnot.

  The race along the High Street was a good’n though. Two of the police cars just managed to overtake the ambulance, but they were held back by the fire tender, which took to violent swerving and then skidded to a halt at an angle effectively blocking both sides of the High Street. This left for a fifty-yard two-legged dash along the pavement. Bookies in the crowd were already taking bets.

  First to reach the crash site should have been fire officer Arnie Mag
oo. He was first out of the tender’s cab and very fast on his feet. But faster was constable Cavendish and far more powerful too. Winger for the Metropolitan Police All Blues rugby side, he grounded fireman Magoo with a splendid tackle, which drew much applause from members of the crowd who were laying their bets on the bobbies.

  Whilst the first two gallant lads grappled it out on the pavement, it was left to Acting Fireman Howard Chubb and Police Constable Edward Flanders to battle for lead position. These two were old adversaries and well versed in each other’s tactics. Whilst Flanders favoured rib-elbowing, Chubb was an eye-gouge merchant.

  They had once drawn a joint first place at a road traffic accident in Abaddon Street, back in 2020. A milk float had collided with a jeep containing soldiers home on furlough and brought down a pillar box, setting it ablaze.

  This particular accident had led to a most interesting situation due to the number of uniformed personnel all finding themselves in the same place at the same time. The soldiers naturally felt that they should take charge of the situation, but a passing postman declared that he should. The driver of the milk float, who argued that his uniform held as much rank as anybody else’s, threw in his two-penny worth and Flanders and Chubb arriving together, as they did, were drawn into a five-way confrontation.

  They were, however, outnumbered by the military on this occasion, who effectively demonstrated that guns held rank over truncheons and fire axes.

  So.

  While Cavendish struggled with Magoo and Chubb held Flanders in a headlock and poked him in the eye. And fire officer Gavin Rupert sat upon the chest of Police Constable Meredith Wainwright. And fire chief Lou Lou had Chief Constable Eric Mortimer Ronan-Bagshaw up against the window of Mr Beefheart’s butcher’s shop. It was left to the enterprising and nimble Police Constable Ferdinand Gonzales, five times winner of the Metropolitan Police ‘You’re it’ championships, to break away from the pack and claim the disaster for his own.